


No Rest for the Weary

by thecumberbinch



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Insomnia, Memories, Panic Attacks, Piano, claire de lune, sorry lmao, woopdie doo more sad stuff folks!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 11:20:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16554806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecumberbinch/pseuds/thecumberbinch
Summary: Tony doesn't sleep.Music helps.





	No Rest for the Weary

**Author's Note:**

> this is p short; I'm working on quite a few things rn and I'm really busy with school, but I'll have some longer stuff coming down the line once I get off for Thanksgiving break. Thanks! :)  
> (btw I'm going to be re-uploading Waters of War once I rewrite it, just to let you know)

Tony doesn’t sleep.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to, it’s that he can’t. He can sleep for a maximum of two or three hours before waking up in a cold sweat with a nightmare that he just can’t shake, his heart racing.

            And so he goes to the piano.

Besides liquor, it’s his only friend on quiet nights; overlooking the bright, shining city that doesn’t sleep, just like him. His sock-clad feet nudge the pedals, his fingers falling across the keys in a pattern he knows so well. He closes his eyes, the melody digging itself up from the memories of his mother: greyed from the years gone by, but not forgotten. He remembers sitting on her lap as she guided him through the music, his small hands stretching to play the chords, his mother pressing the pedals as her manicured nails carded through his hair. She would play for him when he was little after a nightmare to help him fall asleep. In the months after the crash, he had constant night terrors; those nights he would sit and play for hours.

            Strange: the passage of time.

It’s his own little secret, the piano; the only untainted memory of his mother left. Nightmares leave him cold and frightened and alone, but when he plays he thinks that he can feel her, somehow: as if she’s watching over him. The soft notes of Claire de Lune reverberate through the room, like the whispers of Italian from his mother late at night, or the gentle skyline of Manhattan twinkling in the inky night sky. He wanted to be a musician once, when he was six years old. He wrote his own piece: a simple lullaby. From then on, he was obsessed. He’d fill reams of paper with stray notes and broken melodies that never ended, wrapped up in a world all his own where he could see all the stars and galaxies in his head. Of course, Howard screamed at him, made him give it up.

He made it a secret then, vowing never to tell anyone about it, ever. The piano is for him when no one else is around, and that was that. If anyone hears the ghost of a melody floating around the tower, they don’t mention it.

But he is alone, no Howard to yell at him, no critic to mock him: just Manhattan, the ivory keys before him, and the aching in his chest that never seems to go away.

Tony doesn’t sleep, so he nurses his all-nighters with music as the weight on his conscience grows like the dark smudges under his eyes.

And so he plays on through the night: a weary insomniac with a musical secret.

 


End file.
